Getting lost in Demon’s Souls

Something that Demon’s Souls isn’t afraid of is letting the player get lost. All of it’s five areas are designed in drastically different styles. The classic fantasy palace of Boletaria is pretty straightforward, which makes sense. It was built by humans to be used. Traversing the catacombs of level 2-2 on the other hand is trickier. You get lost and whilst trying to find the way there’s always the possibility of falling into a hole. The game throws you in these dark tunnels without a clear sense of your destination. This made me feel like kind of an explorer. Or the Tower of Latria which is a maze-like labyrinth that deliberately doesn’t have a lot of landmarks so it’s easy to end up confused. You’re just as much fighting the enemies, as well as a mental battle of keeping up where you are and where you should go. I’m not saying this is “fun” in a direct sense all the time.

Level 5-1 can be frustrating as hell. It’s hard to find the way and if you don’t have enough health it makes you think twice which path to take. Which isn’t unlikely since you can go there the moment the game lets you freely choose the order of levels. Still, as someone who has played a lot of Soulslikes, this was refreshing. I played Dark Souls 3 for the first time last year and pretty much steamrolled through it, since it’s kind of playing the hits of the series. Demon’s Souls showed me interesting things the later games didn’t build upon in the same way.